


You Said Something

by alp



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Goodbyes, Language Barrier, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Post-Coital Cuddling, Valiant attempts at communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 19:59:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14143437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alp/pseuds/alp
Summary: Cassian is embarking on a long-term assignment.He'll be fine, Jyn tells herself.





	You Said Something

**Author's Note:**

> Title lifted from the PJ Harvey song of the same name.

She stands in his quarters, just beyond the door, her arms crossed. Only 40 minutes have passed since his briefing. Only ten have passed since he messaged her. His hands are at his sides. Her eyes track to the foot of his bunk. He’s already packed.

“Ten months…” she says. 

“To a year, yes.” Cassian’s voice is even, steady, but the words have edges to them. He’s looking at her, unblinking. She looks away. Her throat tightens. 

It’s the first long-term assignment he’s gotten since they met. It’s the longest they’ll have ever been apart. Until now, they’ve somehow always managed to be within a few weeks of one another. Good bit of luck. It was bound to run out eventually. 

“Contact?” 

“Minimal.” 

She’s assumed as much. Her stomach still drops; her chest still hollows out. She has friends, for the first time in a long time, so she won’t be alone, not truly. But that, of course, isn’t the problem. It’s interesting, in a very distant sort of way, that she now has room to care about more than mere loneliness. It’s interesting that loneliness is _mere_. 

“I’ll message you when I can.” He steps closer. She hears him, feels him. His boots tap against the floor. His clothes rustle. The heat of him arcs across her skin. She smells starched linen and commissary soap. “I promise.” 

She glances up at him, sidewise, keeping her head turned away. “You’ll be pretty deep, then?” 

He nods, his eyes flicking up and down. Well, sure. She doesn’t know the whole of his history just yet; it slips from him in trickles, and often at the strangest of times. She knows, however, exactly how fully he’s had to drop into his roles, and exactly how good he is at doing it. Sometimes, it makes her nervous, for reasons unrelated to the danger it poses him. She holds to the fact that she can take him at his word when he makes promises. Of course, some promises are hard to keep, through no fault of the person who makes them. 

“Sure it’s safe to have any contact at all?” 

He sighs, and tilts his head down. His hair dangles over his forehead and into his eyes, in that way that it does, and he glances up at her through it. She feels a powerful urge to touch him. Instead, she curls her arms more tightly around her midsection. 

She feels awkward. Shouldn’t; it’s a silly thing. But she has no idea how to deal with this, how to talk to him about it, or whether she should even try. This is who they are and what they do, and a moment like this has always been going to come, and getting sentimental and weepy won’t do a damn bit of good. A year isn’t so long, anyway. She’s spent a lot longer than that being separated from people she cares about, and a similar length of time having no one to care about at all. 

“You know me better than that. I don’t take risks I can’t afford,” he says. She _does_ know better, but okay. “I’m expected to report back occasionally, anyway.” 

So, not the deepest he’s ever had to go. Good. 

There’s a moment of silence. She’s not looking at him. Pointedly. The walls of his quarters are the same sterile white as the rest of the ship. There’s a small, round window behind him, up and to the left of his bunk -- a well-earned luxury -- looking out on a speckled swath of black, and a desk with a datapad on it, and a few shelves built into the wall, and he’s taking another step, and tomorrow, he won’t be here. It’s really not that big of a deal. She’ll have her own assignments. She’ll have work to do in between them. She’ll have Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut to spend time with during her down time, and K-2 will spend time with her whether she wants him to or not. She’ll be okay, and so will Cassian. 

_He won’t have any of us out there…_

Well, isn’t that a thing, then? Worrying about someone _else_ being alone. 

“Jyn.” He settles his hand on her upper arm. “Look at me.” She does. His features are soft. His hair is still hanging in his eyes. “I’m going to come back.” Voice pitched low. Force, he’s so good at that. She hates it and relishes it at the same time. 

_But what if you don’t?_

“I mean it.” Jaw set, gaze moving down, up. 

“Course.” She shrugs. “I know.” _Someday, one of us might not._

He scoffs. Outside the door, there’s a burst of noise, personnel passing by. She assumes they’re pilots, from the bit of jargon she can make out. 

“You’re very stubborn, you know that?” he says. She frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She is, and she’s well aware of it, but still. 

“You could just say it.” 

“Say what?” 

“What’s bothering you.” 

She snorts. “If that’s your bar, you’re as stubborn as me.” 

He sort of half-smiles. “That’s fair.” He traces circles on her arm. The point of contact is hot. “This isn’t how I wanted tonight to go.” 

Doesn’t seem like it’s going too badly, to her. It’s tame, as far as good-byes go. “What _did_ you want?” 

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Something…” He looks past her, toward the corner nearest the door. There’s a change in his expression. It’s quick, but she catches it: a moment of pain, either remembered or anticipated. Her arms unfold. She places a hand, lightly, on his waist. “...easier, maybe.” There’s more, she can tell, so she waits. It’s hard for him. Hard for her, too. But part of how they’ve been managing to muddle through this whole “relationship” thing is by trying when it is. “I want you to be alright.” 

She gropes for something that conveys, without fully telling. She can’t say it all. She can’t say the half of it, even the part he’s already figured out. “It’s…” The words are sticky. “It’s...going to take some getting used to.” _I’m going to miss you. I’m going to worry about you._

“I know. For me, too.” 

“But…” She’s breathing harder. “I’ll be... we’ll both get through it.” 

The look he gives her tells her that he doubts her sincerity. Well, that’s okay. She doesn’t fully believe herself, either. 

He reaches up to her face. His palms curve around her cheeks. There’s a familiar warmth, a familiar jolt of electricity. A pleasant ache to war with the churning in her gut. His thumbs move. “I’m going to come back,” he repeats. 

“Yeah.” 

Her free hand clutches the fabric of his shirt, tugs him toward her. His nose strikes her forehead, and then, when she tilts her head, brushes against her own. A part of her wants to wail; another part is flooded. This is it, anyway, for a long time. Maybe that’s what he’d meant, and couldn’t say. His breaths are loud and crashing over her mouth. 

“Cassian.” 

“What?” He drags his fingers down her neck, then back up. 

“Shit.” Good question. She lets out a heavy breath. Pulls her head back, just enough to look up at him. “Let’s just…” Stop being so dramatic. 

He leaves in less than 24 hours. 

He gets it, she thinks, because he blinks, and the corner of his mouth curves upwards, and two of his fingers curl under her chin. He kisses her. It’s soft, and slow; her hand moves up his chest, over his shoulder, wraps around his neck. He tangles his fingers in her hair, caresses the back of her head, and then pulls back, whispering something against her lips. She isn’t sure what it is, apart from that it’s likely Festian. He follows it up with: “yeah. You’re right,” and kisses her again. 

Her throat flows into his mouth. Their hips connect, and she tries to think about that, and only that. She tries to think about him wanting her, about his hardness against her. About the way he makes her shudder, about the way he himself shudders when she moves against him. About his eagerness to get her out of her clothes, now that they’ve gotten past the whole talking part; about the burning of her flesh and the knifing pleasure in her gut. 

He’ll be alright. Even without her and all of them. He’d been alone for a long time, just like her. He’s good at what he does. 

He’s very, very good at what he does. 

She guides him to his rack, with her palm on his bare chest, at its center, his eyes locking to hers, in between kisses. She’s on top of him at first, in his lap; he’s grasping at her waist, at her sides, still gazing (she doesn’t want to say ‘reverently,’ because that’s too lofty and ridiculous a description, but it sure seems reverent, to her fogging brain), and then he leans back and rolls them over. Hovers and looks down. She fingers the waistband of his trousers. The lines around his mouth bend; he grabs her wrist, gently. 

This could be any other night. 

“Not yet.” 

“Oh?” 

“Mm.” There’s no difficulty, now. There’s no hesitation, and no pain, in either his eyes or his expression. He sucks her bottom lip into his mouth. “I want to make you come first.” 

There’s a hole in her chest. Her pulse is racing and her hips are twitching. This is any other night. She’d be with him and it’d be like this on any other night. 

“Not gonna object to that.” 

The lines around his eyes crinkle. “I should hope not.” He trails his mouth along her jawline, and bites her earlobe, and she bucks up into him, and he grinds back, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to handle how badly she’s going to miss him, or how she’s going to beat back the constant stream of what ifs. He begins to work his way down her body. Pauses, when he’s between her breasts, and looks up at her. She drags her thumb across his temple, along the curve of his cheekbone, and he presses his lips back to her skin, maintaining eye contact. Damn hair’s still dangling. _Force._ She squeezes her legs together. 

Any other night. 

He nips at her ribcage. He sucks on her stomach. His lips and tongue move down her inner thigh, and back up again. He kisses the space where her leg meets her torso. Draws closer, shies away. She grabs at his hair, at the back of his head, at his shoulders, and feels the sheets bunch up around her heel. Feels his beard, at just the right length to register as soft. _He’s right. I’m stubborn. I should go ahead and say it. All of it._ No. They’ve already both said plenty, and this is their last night together for a while. His head is between her kriffing legs. _His kriffing head is between her kriffing legs._ He breathes, his mouth wide, his lips barely touching her. 

Less than 24 hours. 

His hand drifts up to her breast. His tongue circles her clit. She bites her lip. Trembles. 

Ten months to a year. 

_For kriff’s sake, he’s going down on you, you idiot._

He flattens his tongue against her, works two fingers inside of her. She digs her nails into his scalp. 

He’ll be alright. 

_Stop thinking._

Her back arches. One hand presses into the wall behind her head; the other skips away from him to clutch at the mattress. Her legs close around his head. 

Any other night. 

She’s breathless. He’s crawling back up over her, and there’s a hand on her hip, stroking, gently, tracing the bone. His chest is heaving. She places her hand on his abdomen, and looks up at him, at his clouded eyes and his parted lips, wet from her. She’s hazy and tingling and still wanting, and the sight of him, and the feel of him, is making her chest hurt. 

“Cassian,” she says, while she’s helping him out of his pants. 

“Jyn,” he responds. 

Was there something else she was going to say? Probably not. Her hands are on his thighs, and she is going to miss him. 

Her gaze flits from his eyes to his lips. She kneads the back of his neck, and sweeps her tongue through his mouth. He drags his fingertips over her face. He grabs a fistful of her hair. She is going to miss him, this true man, who tries not to leave her even when he’s leaving her -- or who, at least, doesn’t seem to like the fact that he must. It was so easy for everyone else. For him, it’s not. 

Less than 24 hours. 

His skin is hot against hers. Her stomach is boiling. He enters her, and she whimpers. He moves, and so does she, and she thinks: he’s not close enough. Every point of contact is sweet, but it’s not enough. She wraps her legs and her arms around him, squeezes, and there’s a swelling in her chest that pushes back the worry, and yet... 

One of his hands is beside her head. She bends her arm back and up, grasping his forearm, then his wrist, then the back of his hand. His fingers curl around the ends of hers. Her thumb strokes his palm. They kiss deeply, and go slow, writhing around their connection. Clutching each other tightly. She thinks about his skin; about the way he tastes, and the way he smells; about the sensation of him being all along her, and inside of her; and she vows to remember. She vows to tuck it away, for the long nights she knows are coming, the long nights that her friends won’t be able to help her with. 

A year. 

He buries his face in the space where her neck meets her shoulder. He moans. His teeth sink into her. 

If she had her way, she’d go with him. She’d be there for him, protect him. It’s all ridiculous, but it’s there, it’s there. She presses her cheek to his, and feels him pulsing inside of her, and tells herself, again: he’ll be alright. He’ll be alright, and so will I. 

“You’d better, you know,” she says. 

“Better what?” 

“Come back.” 

_Well, damn, there you go._

He doesn’t frown, per se, but his brows draw inward, and he tucks her hair behind her ear. His hand snakes between the pillow and her head. She touches his jaw. 

“I will.” 

“Right.” 

He breathes. 

“Do you trust me?” 

She does, of course. It surprises her, sometimes, but she does, very deeply. And yet, he must know, as she does, that this isn’t a matter of trust; it’s a matter of understanding how the galaxy works. 

She doesn’t say that. She won’t. Hope is the other thing, twin to trust, that he’s taught her how to do again; it’s not a good time to remind him that she continues to struggle with it. It won’t help him. 

She brushes his hair from his eyes, still dark and hazy, and gives him a small smile. “I do.” 

After a beat, he nods. “Good.” Kisses her, rolls onto the mattress. He nudges her, and she shifts, and he’s sort of holding her from behind, and sort of not. She can still look him in the eye, if she turns her head. She clutches his arm to her chest, tangles her legs up in his, burrows herself into him, into the comforting solidity of his body. As yet wanting, greedy for all the warmth and skin-to-skin contact she can get. It’s going to have to last for quite a while. 

His mouth is on her. “I’ll be fine.” 

_Okay._

He keeps moving his lips, along the curve of her shoulder; over the part of her upper back that lies within his reach; up her neck, to the spot behind her ear. Heat pools, again, in the pit of her stomach and at the base of her spine. She sighs. 

If they fuck a few more times, then her brain is bound to shut up after a while. 

“You’ll be fine.” Very quiet. She furrows her brow. The pain, from before. It’s all well and good, what it means that it’s hard for him, but...goodness, it’s also _hard_ for him. She reflects that she really doesn’t know what she’s doing, at all, despite the time they’ve put into it. She tightens her grip on his arm and looks at him. 

“Yeah,” she lies. 

She wonders, suddenly, how often he’s felt this way. If it’s been every time, none of the times, some and not others. He’s told her about a handful of his long-term assignments, sure, but he’s never gone very deeply into how he’s felt about any of them. She tends not to talk about her feelings, either, so before now, she’s never picked up on the omission. It all just seemed regular. 

She rolls and pushes herself up, sliding her arm underneath his shoulders and pulling him to her. He settles his head into the crook of her neck, jostles her crystal; drapes his arm across her stomach and spreads his hand along her side. Her head dips and turns, until her nose and mouth are in his hair. The corner of her lips graze him, lightly. He’s so warm. The hollow space in her heart is throbbing, lying somewhere between the intense sweetness of being with him and the cold ache of knowing that, soon, he’ll be far off, and in danger, without her. 

She’s such a fool. She’s in his bed, and he’s naked and lying half on her. She’s got to stop thinking about it. She’s got to stop bringing it up, and making him think about it. It’d be nice if she could just let herself enjoy a thing. 

Besides, he’ll be fine. 

The hum of Home One -- faint, most of the time, but ever-present -- vibrates up through the floor, through the bunk. It’s a low-level buzz. Their breathing evens out. The light is on, and the sheets are beneath them, but his frame grows heavy. She draws in a breath that’s filled with him. She starts to drift off. 

It’s shortly after her eyes have closed and her limbs have sunken into the mattress that he says something. Surprised, she tenses. The words aren’t in Basic, but she recognizes them, vaguely. It takes her a moment to realize that he said them earlier. 

She shifts to look at him. His body moves in time with the rise and fall of his chest; his breaths, long and steady, puff over her collar bone. There’s not really any pressing need for her to know -- especially not now, when he’s asleep -- but...she’s curious. Whatever it is, he’s said it twice, and although he has the occasional nightmare, she so far hasn’t known him to be a sleep-talker. 

“Hey,” she whispers, “what was that?” 

Silence. 

“Hey,” she tries again. 

Nothing. 

She blinks. Well. She’s certainly not going to wake him for this (for something else, maybe, but...later. Her presence and some rest, she thinks, are exactly what he needs right now). As slowly as she’s able, she twists back and up, straining, with one arm pinned beneath him. The side of her free arm glances across his cheek. She reaches for the panel on the wall, toggles the overhead light. 

She pulls him closer. 

Ten months to a year. 

She’ll ask him in the morning. Probably. If she thinks of it. 

* * *

She doesn’t. 

He wakes her up with a little over an hour to spare, and they do what they can to make it last, to make it memorable. There’s a contrast that thrills her: she wants to drive him mad, he wants to hold himself back so that he can do the same to her. They walk the line between the two. And at some point in the midst of it, her brain does, in fact, shut up. 

Then they’re squeezed into his fresher. Then they’re putting on their clothes. Then he’s checking his duffel, giving it a final once-over, and her thoughts are spiralling. 

They’re in the corridor. They’re in the hangar. He’s bidding their friends farewell. He’s talking to a marshaller. He’s tossing his effects onto his ship. She’s overtaken, for just a moment, and she hooks her arm around his neck and holds him fast and presses the side of her head to his, heedless, the corners of her eyes burning, and he forms fists around her shirt, one between her shoulder blades and the other at her lower back. 

It’s after this -- after she watches him leave -- that it pops back in there, unaccountably. Could be that it’s something to occupy her mind; could be that she’s heard it some time before last night; could be that it’s something that connects him to her. Whatever the reason, she’s seized by the desire to know. There’s a half hour before she has to report, so she retreats to her quarters. Her bunkmate is absent. She sits on her rack, back to the wall, legs drawn up, and searches for a translation on her datapad. She has to guess at the spelling, and she lands on some positives that she’s pretty sure are false (“I’ll call you?” No shit?). But the phrase becomes clear, soon enough. 

_Te amo._

She stops breathing. 

_Oh._

She starts again. Shallow. Rapid. 

Maybe it really was, “I’ll call you.” Maybe he was just reiterating the fact that yes, he’s going to contact her. 

In his sleep. 

After sex. 

Yeah, right. 

She scrolls down. Explanations. Comparisons. Contextualization. 

_Kriff kriff kriff kriff kriff._

There are levels to this shit, apparently. _And he’s used the upper tier._ Kriff. Kriff. 

No one’s said anything like that to her in… Why would anyone? Why ever? 

_Does he wanna fucking marry me?_

She’s never thought about that in any serious capacity. Well, scratch that -- she has, but only when she was a kid. And she hasn’t been a kid in a very long time. It’s a whole lot of hogwash, in a reality where the galaxy is fucked up, and everybody leaves. 

But the way he leaves is different, because it’s not what he wants to do. And she hates that he’s gone, and she trusts him, and worries for him, and wants what’s best for him (for people to stop trying to use him up like he’s a commodity), and she wishes he saw himself how she sees him, and she wants to be better because… Kriff, kriff, kriff. It was all reciprocated, apparently. She’d never have attached herself to him if she hadn’t suspected he was different. But she still hadn’t expected him to feel the way that she does. 

Hell, she hadn’t expected _herself_ to feel the way that she does. 

Long moments pass. Her heart beats. Her mind works (somehow). She’s calculating where he is. It hasn’t been that long, and he’s got a ride of several hours ahead of him. He can’t have gone dark just yet. 

She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She feels possessed. She searches, again, translating. She taps out a message. It’s so simple. It’s only two words long. There’s no subject line. She stares at it. She deletes the words. She types them again. Her hands shake. 

_What the fuck am I doing?_

She musters up the nerve to hit “send,” and immediately loses it. She wants to take it back. Force, she needs to take it back! There’s a reason he didn’t use Basic! He’s going to be all alone, he needs something, he needs his friends, he needs me. Will he be mad? What if she got it wrong? What if he has no idea what the hell she’s trying to say? She squeezes her eyes shut, presses the back of her head to the wall. Breathes, hard, through her nose. _Kriff kriff kriff kriff kriff._ Too late, too late. She tells herself it’s fine. It’s not like she’s the one who said it. That’s on him. 

She opens her eyes. The message she sent sits there, waiting for a reply. 

_~~Yo tambien.~~_

She switches the screen off and places the pad beside herself, on top of her sheets. She sits. Waits. Tries to get her breathing under control. What are you, 16? She’s being ridiculous. This is ridiculous. 

She shouldn’t have sent it. 

Fuck. 

The indicator light blinks. 

Her lips part. 

She picks it up. 

Her heart hammers. 

Ten months to a year. 

He’s sent a response. Her fingers hover. Beneath the panic, there’s a spot of warmth, exaltation waiting to blossom. 

She opens it.


End file.
